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7.7

Normalized Vs Denormalized Design

Asked by bobbyrellis in MS SQL Server, Design & Methodology, Databases Miscellaneous

Tags: verticle, horizontal, normalized, denormalized, database

MSSQL 2000
OK, i'm working on an application that allows for data entry. It allows the user to create "Templates" which are made up of "fields". Here is a layout of the tables.

Table: Template
Columns:
TemplateID
TemplateDisplayName

Table: Fields
Columns:
FieldID (PK auto increment)
FieldDisplayName
TemplateID

Table: DataValues
Columns:
ValueID (PK auto increment)
TemplateID
FieldID
FieldValue
RecordID

Table: Records
Columns:
RecordID (PK auto increment)
FolderID
..
..

The problem with this design is speed. When bringing back all records for a particular Template and folder, I must iterate through each verticle value to build a horizontal dataset to bind to my grid.

As of late, I've tried to implement denormalized tables for each TemplateID that has columns for each field. This speeds up retrieval, however, enforcing data integrity is virtualy impossible with this solution.

I've thought possibly about changing the requirements to state that any Template can only have say 10 fields. Then have one data table with 10 columns. Then allow the user to add other fields only hold them in another table so they can be loaded when needed, sorta like master/detail.

I know this design problem has to be somewhat common so please, all ideas are welcome. I'm looking for a design that will perform quickly and keep data integrity.

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Normalized Vs Denormalized Design

Asked by bobbyrellis in MS SQL Server, Design & Methodology, Databases Miscellaneous

Tags: verticle, horizontal, normalized, denormalized, database

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